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Beitullah Mehsud emerges to deny hand in Benazir’s killing

ISLAMABAD: President Pervez Musharraf once described him as Pakistan’s “most dangerous” man, and named him as the mastermind behind the killing of Benazir Bhutto. The United States said last week that his capture would be a “metric” of Pakistan’s efforts in the “war on terror.”

Yet, in a sign of the fast-changing times in Pakistan, Mr. Mehsud was confident enough to emerge from hiding on Saturday to hold a press conference for a group of journalists taken by heavily armed Taliban to meet him in the Kotkai area of South Waziristan.

The new government in Pakistan is negotiating a peace agreement with Mr. Mehsud’s Tehreek-i-Taliban, an umbrella group of tribal militants, causing concern in the Bush administration that it would take the pressure off the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda to regroup and use the tribal areas as a staging post for attacks in Afghanistan.

Mr. Mehsud’s statements on Saturday are likely to cause even more concern. The 30-year-old militant commander told the journalists that the peace agreement with Pakistan would not prevent the Pakistani Taliban from continuing the jihad in Afghanistan.

“Islam does not recognise any man-made barriers or boundaries. The jihad in Afghanistan will continue,” he was quoted as saying by Dawn, whose reporter was in the group of journalists taken to meet him.

But, he said the Pakistani Taliban made up only a small fraction of the fighters in Afghanistan, and a majority were Afghan.

He said the success of the peace agreement with Pakistan would depend on the government’s ability to break away from the United States. Peace would return to the tribal areas once Pakistan stopped taking orders from the U.S., he said.

If that did not happen, then this peace agreement too would go the same way as the 2005 and 2006 deals struck by the Musharraf regime with the militants, he warned.

Mr. Mehsud also denied involvement in Benazir’s killing. “Politicians have their own rivalries,” he said, pointing that her brothers Shahnawaz and Mir Murtaza were also killed but none knew who was behind those killings.

Referring to the ruling Pakistan People’s Party demand for an international inquiry, Mr. Mehsud said the United Nations too would not be able to establish the truth behind Benazir’s killing as it was “subservient” to the U.S.

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Beitullah Mehsud emerges to deny hand in Benazir’s killing

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